CURRENT & UPCOMING Exhibitions
Cheyenne Rain Le Grande ᑭᒥᐘᐣ
Mullyanne ᓃᒥᐦᐃᑐᐤ
April 27- June 8
Mullyanne by Becca Taylor
Mullyanne, The movements of your ribbons reminds me of the setting sunset along the lake. How the pastel colours ripple into one another as the calm waters dance reflecting the sky back to itself. Growing up visiting a Northern Alberta lake not so different from your own, I can feel the calm coolness radiating from the waters’ edge as the sun gently begins its decent to rest behind the horizon. Whenever I leave the prairies, I yearn for the sky. Which is probably why I never leave long.
Mullyanne, The flattened pastel light, soft movement and tenderness ebbs me in between two-states. Like the littoral of a lake shifting between reality and an alternative state. A dream state. I spend time immersed into your reality but shift back into my own body as a witness. Different realities come together to make up a community, a story, an understanding. Right now, I am listening and witnessing to yours. Learning as I watch you shift in and out of space.
Mullyanne, The beads that are adorned to your face reminds me of words of Métis Scholar Sherry Farrell Racette. She shares that “Language, symbolism, and continuity of practice 'grandmothered' ancient meanings on to new forms; rather than marking a decline in material culture, they illustrate the important work of women in the creation and synthesis of knowledge systems”[1] While she focused on beads, fibres and cloth in her investigations. I see the continuation of continuity of practice in the Bepsi tabs and the platforms of the moccasins. How language and your cultural understandings are embedded into the construction of the garments. A showcase of fluidity, survival and adaptation of cultural understandings and knowledge transfer. How each item is unique to you but taught by our ancestors.
Mullyanne, the futurity of your materials reminds me of the words surrounding the concept of Indigenous futurisms[2] of mixed Anishinaabe and settler author Grace Dillon and Métis writer Chelsea Vowel. Dillion points out that Indigenous futurisms is ‘how personally one is affected by colonization, discarding the emotional and psychological baggage carried from its impact, and recovering ancestral traditions in order to adapt in our post–Native Apocalypse world.” Chelsea Vowel states: “Indigenous futurisms are not merely synonymous with science fiction and fantasy, despite how they may be viewed as such within the mainstream. Indigenous futurists express their ontologies in various forms, and as Grace Dillon puts it, “our ideas of body, mind, and spirit are true stories, not forms of fantasy.”[3]
Mullyanne, I am surrounded by Language. Syllabics on the wall. The soft echo of your voice singing an identifiable song, that I understand even though I do not know the nēhiyawēwin words to sing with you. It’s enchanting and comforting. You share with me crystal visions. Unlike Stevie Nicks you do not keep these visions to yourself but share them with us. A future centred in Nehiyaw Isko knowledge systems, language and the prairie skies.
[1] Sherry Farrell Racette, “My Grandmothers Loved to Trade: The Indigenization of European Trade Goods in Historic and Contemporary Canada,” Journal of Museum Ethnography, No. 20 (March 2008): 77
[2] The term Indigenous Futurisms was first used by Grace Dillon in 2003. Indigenous Futurisms was used to describe a movement within art and media forms that expressed Indigenous perspectives on future, present and past.
[3] Chelsea Vowel, “Writing Toward a Definition of Indigenous Futurism,” Literary Hub. June 2022 https://lithub.com/writing-toward-a-definition-of-indigenous-futurism/
Cedar-Eve
Mnidoo Gamii
April 27- June 8
Cedar Eve : Mnidoo Gammi
by Chalsley Taylor
Energy never dies — it can only be transformed. There are multiple realms of existence and, in death, our spirit only passes into another such realm. Mnidoo Gammi, Cedar Eve’s first solo exhibition, affirms connections that sustain across myriad boundaries; in it, we encounter both those present in our physical plane and those who have transitioned beyond it.
Cedar’s mother lives in Toronto, where the artist grew up, but is from Saugeen First Nation. Her father’s side is from Wikwemikong Unceded Territory. In this way, Mnidoo Gammi (so-called Georgian Bay), forms a locus of the artist’s lineage. Her mother’s land rests on Lake Huron, along the Bruce Peninsula; Mnidoo Gammi is the body of water that connects this Peninsula at Manitoulin island, where Wikwemikong lies. Anishinaabemowin for “Spirit Lake”, this water speaks to interrelational dynamics that echo throughout the exhibition, situating the conversations generated between its pieces. We witness Cedar’s formal strategies build upon one another across mediums to reflect gestures of care, interconnection and play. Within her distinct visual language, few if any discreet bounds exist between entities we observe, human or otherwise; spirits depicted in vibrant, abstracted forms flow into one another.
Cedar identifies community as a central part of her practice, noting this was lacking in her early years.[1] In her pieces, expansive spiritual entities often fit themselves into the spaces around or between photographed subjects, their limbs curved to hold friends, family or Cedar herself. Their presence appears protective or comforting; at times, their heads tilt inward to rest against those of loved ones.[2] Spirit Stitch, cotton pillows featuring portraits of Cedar’s parents, draws together family and restorative care. An offering to the artist’s dream world, the collection oscillates between the physical and metaphysical. With a history of intense and vivid dreams, the artist notes she sometimes awakens feeling as if she’d not rested at all. It was a common occurrence for her and her brother, Zach (ba), to have similar dreams in the same night despite living far apart.
The link between the physical and metaphysical is reprised in Honouring the Dead, a series depicting loved ones “called to continue their spirit journey”.[3] Creating these works provides a constructive method for the artist to process her grief, for it is an act of reflection and communion with the deceased. Cedar is in dialogue with these individuals as she adorns their photograph amidst a torrent of memories, such that the completed works stand as mnemonic devices, surreptitiously stirring up stories painful and humorous alike. Yet, as she notes, Honouring is not intended to centre the trauma of loss, citing her purposeful use of bright colours to produce intricate beauty. As in Spirit Stitch, Honouringdelineates Cedar’s lineage from her point of view; concretized in these works, this lineage elides the division between blood relations and chosen family. In this archival series, which curator Cécilia Bracmort describes as “a visual altar,” the artist combines beading and photography — both of which techniques, as Bracmort notes, “are related to the notion of time: an elongated time for the former and the instant (snapshot) for the latter”.[4]
Works in Mnidoo Gammi conspicuously mark time even as they collapse it. Cedar often appropriates archival practices to her own ends, best reflected in Cedrus Annum, a series of daily self portraits. Here we are charged to consider the ways in which these practices refuse prescriptions of historic archival sciences and undermine their authority. With the artist controlling what can and cannot be discerned, how should we (how can we) impose any organizational structures beyond the chronological? How are the various parts to be categorized, named and thus defined? To some extent, Cedrus Annum also functions as a personal history, one whose primary modality is play. The artist frustrates our attempts to decipher the moments (and selves) recorded in these images: Drawing over the instant photographs to control our view, she adds faces or blocks of colour to some; elsewhere, small markings appear in decorative motifs. Other portraits appear without any modification at all.
As Cedar Eve illuminates, obscures and transforms at will, her work insists upon the indelible nature of the relationships connecting the artist to her community, family, and past selves. Though the works we encounter in Mnidoo Gammi are deeply personal, she extrapolates the intimate into singular visions of interrelational connection, communication and self-representation. Post encounter, we may begin to perceive the mutability of time for ourselves.
[1] Usher, Camille. Relations, 2016, 36–41.
[2] Depicted in Cedar Eve, “Nokomis/Zigos (Grandma/Auntie)” from “Honouring the Dead,” 2012.
[3] Michael “Cy” Cywink, Personal communication to Cedar Eve, March 2024.
[4] Cécilia Bracmort, Personal communication to Cedar Eve, April 2024.
UPCOMING Exhibition
Resist with Love: The Xtopias of Solomon Enos
curated by Skawennati
June 21- August 17, 2024
Solomon Enos, Kū‘ē me ke aloha - Resist with Love, 2023